Falkenherz

Ist das ein Neustart?

Any ETA for the beta to become the main game? I am looking forward to the changes, but don´t want to play pre-release beta branches.

Traveling to the outer rim should feel long and far. I can make this only bearable for me by taking my time and explore stuff on my way. A tip when on the final dialogue: Do NOT end it with ESC-key, or the artifact will not spawn. Took me some hours to figure that one out...

Ship got destroyed by enemy fire. After recovering turrets, also during combat, they had lost the trait of independent targeting.

Dickkopf! ;)

I disagree. At late game, I also run away because fights just take long and are boring. Imagine being stuck every five to ten minutes in a fight which takes five to ten minutes, when you want to do something completely different, like exploring or mining or trading. In my impression, the game tries to make you keep on your toes, by spawing enemies after a given time in an otherwise tranquil sector. This works fine, until shield and ship min-maxing takes the challenge away. There must be a way to feel powerful without trivialising said central challenge of the game.

Nice cartoon! :) In my first game on insanity difficulty, I have to be pretty dodgy from start on. I am hardly left alone in any sector for mining or salvaging, have to grab what I can get and run. Trying to fight back gets me quickly shot to pieces. In my opinion, this kind of tense play is also at later levels possible, if it were not for the rather simplistic shield mechanic. If they changed that, spawns closer to the galaxy core would keep being challenging. Scissor-rock-paper mechanics should make you keep on your toes. Got a shield tank? Damn, those corsairs which just warped in have shield-breaker weaponry!

You outdid yourself with the raven shipline, absolutely stunning! Very close to some favourite form of mine, but I can never make myself to all that fiddly design work around the base components; it really shows here. I hope I can take and adapt the Raven with external colume based thrusters (for realism sake and the upcoming thruster changes) and put in a Xanion shield element somewhere... Also, I will try to transform the central spine into a cargo hold (very efficient mass/hitpoints ratio).

Please no... thats what oblivion did, and it was no fun whatsoever (why upgrading your stats, when it doesn´t matter?) I agree, no fun if it is badly done. Elder Scrolls Online does it, too, but better. The enemy gets adapted to that what you should be able to do on your current level. You are still left with the challenge to actually be able to do all what is expected of a character at a given level. And you can "out-level" your current level with a good combination of skills and equipment. On top, you can challenge yourself more by going against a larger number of opponents. However, I am not sure the game needs more challenge but rather more depth in the endgame.

I am also very bored in the endgame (normal difficulty). Every 10 minutes latest, I get beset by 5 to 10 Xsoltans or bandids, the ensuing battle takes long but is never really dangerous for my high-end spacecraft. As such, combat degrades to an unwelcome interruption on my last phase of questing, namely finding the last high-end tech40+ weaponry, collecting xsoltan tech fragments and convincing all inner-core factions to help out in the final combat. On the sideline, I am bothered with having to weed out about 600 turrets and modules each other while. No, thanks. I started a new game on insane, and at least the beginning is quite challenging. I got my ship nearly shot to pieces several times, ran into resource bottlenecks, had even to abandon my damaged ship with a "dinghi" in quest for new resources and cash. But I fear the gameplay will degrade again in later stages, when you have already too much of everything and nothing can really challenge you or advance anymore. My suggestion would be to refine weapon and shield mechanics, to introduce a scissors-paper-rock-mechanic, so that you have to adapt your ship also in endgame environments, according to what challenge a given sector throws at you. There should be shield- and armor-breaker weapons, shield and integrity field mechanics should respond differently to cannons than lasers, etc. Logistics should be streamlined and condensed to those elements which pose a game challenge for the player. The ability to build fleets needs to be finalized. As of now, managing a fleet of ships, already making them follow you and fight properly, is a nightmare and no fun at all.

I am not particularily fond of having another block. It gets too complex like this. Koonschi wants thrusters to work even when covered. Well, this is absurdly unrealistic, so my only way currently to think this "realistic" is that said covered block parts "are" kind of the gyros/reaction wheels. No need for another block type, really.

I think the devs could have an open mind towards this debate. After all, they nerved integrity fields because they did not want them to make the ship a uniform damage block. The entire mechanic could be made more complex. For example, instead of being a "single-block-damage-field", they shield could just dampen incoming damage and they could become directional/locally limited. Fields would add hitpoints to blocks. The combination of the two would make ships more powerful, but still have varied damage effects on ships, which is a strong goal of the devs.

Very nice shiplines! I assume that you have to work with a plethora of hidden thrusters in order to achieve this kind of maneuverability compared to the mass of each ship?

"Leiter" is indeed conductor. Howver, due to the rng generation of each sector, it can indeed happen that you have to travel very long before you encounter a certain good. I am using a trade module to determine with one view if a given sector has one of the required goods. I select the sectors by looking at the kind of factories it has, or if it has a tradepost. After three games, my experience is that it takes between 2 and 8 hours to get all the mats together.

I assume this script does not correct this error for already created weapons?